


The Best of Intentions

by Sixthlight



Series: The Arranged Marriage AU [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, Family Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26625652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: Nicolò shook his head, and said in his native Ligurian “I – I thought I saw my brother Marco.” He shook his head again, and switched to Arabic. “But that can’t be right.”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: The Arranged Marriage AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1936981
Comments: 57
Kudos: 1020





	The Best of Intentions

“Marco,” said Nicolò, stopping dead in the middle of the marketplace. If he had been in the busiest one, down by the docks, he would immediately have had five people walk into him, newly-wed prince or no; since Yusuf and he were escorting Yusuf’s sister Noor, it was the marketplace in the royal quarter of the city, and there was a great deal more space.

“Nicolò?” Yusuf prompted him, when he said nothing more. As a statement, it hadn’t made a lot of sense.

Nicolò shook his head, and said in his native Ligurian “I – I thought I saw my brother Marco.” He shook his head again, and switched to Arabic. “But that can’t be right.”

“We would have had word if your father had sent a ship, surely,” said Yusuf.

“Surely,” Nicolò agreed, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. The ship that had brought Nicolò and his party to Yusuf’s Great Feast had gone back to Genova bearing the glad tidings that the Comte’s youngest son’s proposal had been accepted, and a copy of the wedding contract. No letter had yet returned. Yusuf’s mother had said to give it time.

“Is your sister buying a knife?” were the next words out of Nicolò’s mouth; Yusuf observed that one of his sister’s ladies was indeed taking possession of a very fine dagger. He got over there so fast that the two guards with them, who had been chatting between themselves, not concerned about his or his sister’s safety in the heart of their own city, were nearly left behind.

“Is that a present for someone?” Yusuf asked his sister.

“No, it’s for me,” Noor said. “Quỳnh said I needed more knives, especially since my brother had made such a -” She broke off, evidently remembering they were in public. “Such an unusual choice of husband.”

“Unusual, you are very kind,” said Nicolò, who had not missed that. Noor grinned shyly at him.

“When were you talking to Princess Quỳnh?” Yusuf asked, as they moved away.

“When I was helping her to, ah, prepare to leave,” said Noor. “After the feast. Mother told me I should show her the back way out to the stables.”

“How do you know the back way out to the stables?”

“I followed you when we were younger, of course.” Noor scowled at Yusuf. “And stop planning to take my nice new dagger away; your quarters are practically an armory.”

“I know how to _use_ everything in my quarters,” said Yusuf.

“Nicolò’s going to give me lessons,” said Noor.

“I did say I would,” agreed Nicolò, not even a little bit apologetically.

“You can’t be alone with my sister, that would be entirely inappropriate,” said Yusuf. “I suppose I shall just have to help.”

“We never get to be alone, Yusuf,” his sister pointed out. “Our mother is the queen. Nobody is allowed to _breathe_ inappropriately around me.”

“I suppose I shall just have to help anyway, to make sure you learn how to use it properly,” said Yusuf. “Who knows what they teach in Genova?” Nicolò laughed.

*

“Which one of your brothers is Marco?” Yusuf asked Nicolò that night, as they leant on the railing of the balcony of their quarters and watched the moon rise over the bay. Nicolò had told him the names of all of his siblings, but if Yusuf was being honest, they were all very difficult to remember and besides there were _six_ of them – that was just the living brothers – besides three sisters, who were all married, which was more names to remember. It was almost as bad as trying to remember how he was related to everybody in his father’s family.

“The next oldest,” said Nicolò. “He went out on campaign for the first time at the same time as me. He enjoyed it.”

Nicolò had never been terribly specific about exactly why he had taken against military life so badly, or not more than he had been on their wedding night; Yusuf had heard some tales of the Franks in Sicily and could imagine some of the details, not that any military campaign produced tales to gladden the heart.

“You must have enjoyed some of it,” Yusuf said. Nobody got to be quite as competent with a longsword as Nicolò was, in a deadly fight, without some love for it.

“Well, some,” said Nicolò. “Your sister also wants me to teach her how to use a crossbow, I feel obliged to tell you.”

“Of course she does,” said Yusuf. “She’s practicing in case she decides to assassinate me and take the throne herself.” Nicolò rightly rolled his eyes at that. “You may as well show me at the same time. I’ve never tried.”

“Maybe she can shoot Marco, if he ever does show up here,” said Nicolò. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“We’re pretending to have an alliance now,” said Yusuf. “That isn’t going to help matters.”

“Yes.” Nicolò sighed. “What a pity.”

*

Unfortunately for everybody involved, it turned out that Nicolò had _not_ been wrong about what he’d seen. The first Yusuf knew about it was when his brother – or actually it might not have been, Yusuf wasn’t very good at telling Franks (or Genovese, as Nicolò would remind him) apart when they were trying to assault him – anyway, the first Yusuf knew about it was when he and Nicolò were out hawking with some of the court ten days later and somebody grabbed him from behind.

They had wandered a discreet distance away from the main party, although not so far that yelling would fail to alert anybody, they weren’t _stupid._ As Noor had pointed out the other day, given their positions, the amount of time they spent truly alone with each other was actually very limited. All Yusuf had really wanted to do was sit with his newlywed husband by the river, and pretend there were not a dozen courtiers and twice that many guards and servants within earshot, and perhaps recite some poetry, the hunting that day having proved very poor. Or maybe do things other than reciting poetry; Yusuf hadn’t been sure how Nicolò felt about outdoor trysting but was very curious to find out.

That plan had been summarily ruined when he had seen two Franks emerge from low bushes behind Nicolò, armed and armored. He had opened his mouth to shout, and found an arm around his throat.

Yusuf kicked backward – the man wasn’t wearing greaves, as he found out when he didn’t break his heel – and threw himself forward. His assailant was pulled off his feet, and in the short ensuing scuffle Yusuf was able to roll away. What he had not counted on was that they were very close to a point where the land rolled upwards along the river, leaving an increasingly steep bluff. Yusuf went over it.

He was saved the ignominy of drowning _himself_ in the river, as he probably would have done if he’d hit his head, by landing in a bush growing out from the bluff. Some distant yelling drifted down to him; he couldn’t make out the words. This was proving to be a very annoying day.

Yusuf made his way painfully back up the bluff over the next little while. A childhood spent climbing around the palace had given him the patience to attempt it, and rendered the height less terrifying than it might have been – really, Yusuf thought, the danger in falling had been the shallowness of the river in the height of summer, not the fall itself. Although he was going to be feeling it for the next few days at least.

He concentrated on the climb and the fall because he couldn’t afford to start worrying about what was happening to Nicolò. The only way to help him was to reach the top.

He could see some more vegetation growing along the edge of the bluff, and aimed for that. It would cover him as he climbed.

As he got close to the edge, the yelling resolved into words. It was in very colloquial Ligurian, Nicolò’s native dialect, and Yusuf had to concentrate to make out what was being said.

“- _rescue_ me?” Nicolò was saying. He wasn’t yelling; his voice was just very cold, and very clear. It was how Yusuf would expect him to sound if Yusuf ever insulted him unforgivably, or suggested that instead of Noor marrying a Venetian Yusuf should take a second wife, or something of that nature.

“Yes!” said someone else in the same dialect, although he was yelling. “You were a month away from taking your vows, after Father so generously allowed you to enter the monastery, and then we are expected to believe that you decided to throw it over to marry some heathen prince?”

“They’re not heathens here, they’re Muslims,” said Nicolò wearily, “which is different, and I know you know this. I sent a letter, Marco, along with the contract, and surely the rest of Father’s men told him what happened.”

“Duke Keane was murdered that same night! Who knows what really -”

“Duke Keane tried to murder _us.”_

_“_ Is that what you were told?”

“That is what happened.”

“You were told this was ceremonial, so they had no cause to be insulted and attack us or our shipping! You were told to refuse -”

“I was told that if I behaved myself and didn’t embarrass Genova I could go back and take my vows,” said Nicolò, “which is not the same thing, and if Father wanted me to refuse then he should have said so in so many words.”

“You’re such a sophist,” said his brother. “I suppose that’s what they teach you in monasteries.”

Yusuf was now in a position to see that there were only the three of them, the two he had seen and the third, who must be the brother. They had Nicolò on his knees and his hands bound, but a broken nose on one and two very good black eyes on the other suggested that had not happened easily. Yusuf would have expected no less.

He contemplated announcing that he _had_ been told in so many words to refuse Nicolò and it was only because his mother was a benevolent and generous woman (and had spent so many years already training him to rule, as she had pointed out since) that he had been allowed to get away with accepting him. Also because Nicolò had turned out to be kind and intelligent and a devil with a sword in his hands, which were all excellent qualities in a consort. He wondered if Nicolò’s brother knew any of that. He seemed to have a very poor and wrong view of him.

Then he decided that Nicolò’s brother seemed bent on getting Nicolò to agree that kidnapping him back to Genova was some sort of favour, which Nicolò was never going to do and would therefore eat up precious time, and headed up the river, along the edge of the bluff.

*

There would have been something extremely personally satisfying about going after Nicolò’s brother and his men armed with nothing more than the long knife he had taken with him when they had left the main party, but Yusuf wasn’t quite mad enough to fancy his own odds against three fully armoured men with longswords. Royalty did not improve your chances of surviving a sword through the gut, or a broken neck – as Duke Keane had so recently and finally learned. Besides, there was really no point in all the guards and servants and things if he insisted on doing everything alone. That lesson of his mother’s _had_ sunk in.

So instead he arrived back a short while later on horseback, having dusted off the dirt from climbing the cliff, re-adjusted his turban, and belted his sword back on, all the better to look his part. He was accompanied by most of the guardsmen, half-a-dozen of the courtiers who he trusted to look disdainful and not say anything stupid (his cousins, mostly) and, because he absolutely did not believe she would go meekly otherwise, his sister. Everybody else was on their way back to the town.

“Good afternoon,” Yusuf said, in Ligurian. Nicolò was still on his knees, and his brother was still yelling, so that had gone as expected, although he had gone blessedly and gratifyingly silent when the hunting party had thundered up. “I will have my husband back now, thank you.”

“He’s not asking,” Nicolò said, a smile beginning to play at the corner of his mouth. His eyes had gone immediately to Yusuf, with a fierce look of relief.

“I should have brought a crossbow,” said Noor, taking in the situation.

“Noor!” Yusuf said, quellingly. She was unquelled.

“They don’t speak Arabic,” Nicolò said, in the same language.

“Stop that!” said his brother, in Ligurian. “Tell them to speak in something understandable.”

“We all understand each other perfectly well,” Yusuf said, matching him. “And he’s right; I wasn’t asking.”

Marco di Genova, or so Yusuf presumed he must be called, had a strong look of Nicolò about him, but with darker hair, a much less interesting nose, and what appeared to be a permanently annoyed expression. Or perhaps that was just the effect of being sent to rescue his brother and finding him uninterested in being rescued. His lips pressed together as if holding in another insult, but he gestured grudgingly to his men, and they stood back. He could see he was badly outnumbered. Nicolò got to his feet and joined Yusuf’s party.

Yusuf dismounted and cut the rope from his hands. He wanted to hold Nicolò and check that he was uninjured beyond the one or two scrapes Yusuf could see, and the marks from the rope; this wasn’t the time or the place. He settled for squeezing Nicolò’s hands as he pulled the rope away. Nicolò squeezed back. A guard brought forward Nicolò’s horse, and they both remounted themselves. Some conversations were much better had from saddleback, if you could.

“Are you all right?” Noor asked Nicolò, not quite quietly; he shook his head. “Fine, fine. They did not come here to harm me. As surprising as that may seem.”

“I thought they kept all the women here under lock and key,” said one of Marco’s guards in Ligurian, not quietly.

“My mother is the queen of Tunis,” Yusuf said, also in Ligurian. “And she is going to pass judgement on you, so I would keep your thoughts about the women of our lands to yourself if I were you.” It was fortunate that most of the other people here didn’t speak Nicolò’s language; that wasn’t universal, though, and some dark looks were being exchanged by those who had got the gist of the remarks.

“You can’t blame me for coming to rescue my brother,” protested Marco. Yusuf’s estimation of his intelligence was dropping rapidly.

“Rescue me from _what_?” Nicolò said, with some real exasperation. “You have yet to explain!”

“From foreign…” Marco trailed off. “Foreigners.” He narrowed his eyes at his younger brother, perched confidently above him, and said “Unless you enjoy lying back and getting fucked every night that much.”

The _only_ reason that didn’t cause an immediate outcry was that he used several slang terms which even those who understood Ligurian, or enough of the trading tongue to follow the discussion, would not know. Yusuf only took his meaning because Nicolò had been teaching him some of those terms, as they tended to come up when Nicolò was distracted, in bedroom circumstances. Marco was also apparently not quite as stupid as he was acting, because he said the words, but in a light tone and with a calm face.

“I don’t have any complaints,” Nicolò said cooly, evidently choosing to ignore the fact that it was a highly incorrect characterization of their marriage to date. “Yusuf, is there any more need to speak with them before we return to the city?”

“I don’t believe so,” said Yusuf, and gave instructions for the Genovese to be tied up and walked behind the rest of the party.

“See,” Nicolò said to Noor, “this is why you should marry a Venetian. The highest-ranked men in Genova are all my brothers, and they’re all like this.”

“Incredibly bone-headed?”

“Among other things.”

“My brother’s incredibly bone-headed, and you like being married to him.”

“He has some redeeming qualities,” said Nicolò, with an amused sidewards glance to Yusuf.

“What about a Pisan?” suggested Yusuf, who had learned a little of the local politics in Nicolò’s homeland by now, and felt Nicolò deserved that suggestion.

“Absolutely not,” said Nicolò at once, with a look of disgust; Noor and Yusuf laughed.

*

Yusuf’s mother was receiving petitioners that day and did not care to put aside the concerns of her own citizens for her son-in-law’s family being troublesome – the wazir conveyed this, but the sentiment was purely his mother’s – so they were left to cool their heels in the dungeons, while Yusuf and Nicolò spoke to Yusuf’s father. Noor had been persuaded to leave with the promises that she could sit in on the judgement that evening, and also that she was allowed to tell Yasmin and Laila and Amina (her and Yusuf’s other sisters) all about what had happened.

“If we send them back to Genova, what will happen?” Yusuf’s father asked.

“I’m not sure,” Nicolò admitted. “I wasn’t expecting them to come in the first place. My father made it clear he was well-rid of me to the monastery. I doubt he wants me back for my own sake.”

“We can’t just keep killing Frankish princes,” grumbled Yusuf’s father. “Someone will start to take it amiss.”

“We’re not Franks,” said Nicolò. “And…please understand…I think my father meant it well. If anything Marco said is true.”

“Please explain,” said Yusuf, “how kidnapping you could be meant _well_.”

“We would have you kidnapped if you rode off to Paris or some barbarian city like that and sent back word that you’d got married and didn’t mean to come home,” said Yusuf’s father, to Yusuf. “Of course this is not at all the same thing, since Nicolò was not the heir, but…”

“Nicolò came here to propose to me! It wasn’t an _impossibility_ that I would accept!”

“Marco didn’t think he was going to be kidnapping me,” said Nicolò, with a sigh. “He thought I had been…pressured or unable to refuse or not understood what was happening until it was too late – you must understand, most of the men who came with me understand your tongue poorly if at all, and they certainly couldn’t hear what we said to each other, Yusuf.”

“I could hear it and I wasn’t sure you understood what was happening,” said Yusuf’s father, “but there is no question you did by the time you signed the wedding contract, so never mind that. I thought you…did not care for your father.”

“He tries to do the right thing,” Nicolò said, very carefully. “It is…the thing he taught me I treasure most. But it turns out that he and I do not agree on what the right thing is. Anyway, when that became clear, he let me go to the monastery, which he – he did not have to do. He only sent me here because all my brothers and sisters were married or betrothed already. He did not want to offend you.”

“This has been fairly offensive,” said Yusuf’s father.

“Yes,” said Yusuf. “Which, if I understand Nicolò right, is why he thinks his father must have done it out of concern for him.”

Yusuf’s father sighed very deeply. “What do _you_ want done with them, then?”

“Send them home,” said Nicolò. “Make them pay some recompense, that will be understood, and then hopefully we can let it become a misunderstanding, now resolved.”

“God willing,” said Yusuf and his father, at the same time.

They were sent to bathe and make themselves presentable for the full court. In the baths, Nicolò traced his fingers along the long bruise that was rising up Yusuf’s side, where he had hit the tree on his way down.

“I didn’t see you fall,” he said. “I just knew you had vanished.”

“I’m glad,” said Yusuf. “If it had been me, and you had…I would have been worried.”

He didn’t say more than that, partly because they weren’t precisely alone, even if nobody was close enough to overhear them, partly because he didn’t know how he wanted to say it, yet. They had only known each other for two months. They were married; they were lovers; Yusuf could not say truly yet that they were in love. But he knew enough by now to know that he would like to be.

“I would have been afraid,” Nicolò said.

“I doubt that very much,” said Yusuf, who had seen Nicolò ambush an armed man with nothing more than a common eating knife and a lot of determination. And Yusuf at his side, of course, but he couldn’t have known then whether Yusuf was any use in a fight.

“Afraid for _you_ ,” Nicolò said, raising his eyebrows as if Yusuf was being obtuse, which made it something less than a romantic declaration but also just about what Yusuf could stand to hear, right now, when he needed to go and put on a stern face. So he gave Nicolò a quick kiss of gratitude all the same. 

*

Yusuf’s mother made him deliver the judgement, because Marco did not understand their tongue and she did not speak Ligurian fluently enough to set the tone that she wanted, which was one of her gracious choice to pardon the foreign barbarians who had intruded upon her lands and laid hands upon her beloved son-in-law. So she sat on her throne and looked down upon them, while Yusuf stood beside her and proclaimed her judgement, first in Arabic for the court, and then in Ligurian for the men being judged. Nicolò stood off to the side a little, near the screen that Noor and some of the other women were decorously sitting behind.

“…and understand,” Yusuf finished, “that if another injury such as this is attempted against our family, it will be answered much more harshly.”

“Tell Father,” Nicolò added, entirely out of turn, “that if he sends you or anybody else to drag me back to Genova I will send him back their heads.” He paused. “I know that is the sort of message he understands.”

Marco blanched. Yusuf’s mother said, in Arabic, “I think we have some very fine boxes in just the right size.” That set off a round of whispering among the rest of the hall.

“Really?” Yusuf said to Nicolò out of the corner of his mouth, aware that they stood before the court but also aware that Noor was probably taking notes, and all things considered, Yusuf would prefer she wasn’t persuaded of the moral acceptability of fratricide.

“Your husband is softer than you,” said Marco to Nicolò, the first thing he had said all evening. “He didn’t like that.”

“I am thinking of the poor couriers we would have to send to Genova,” Yusuf said, blandly. “Imagine the smell by the time they got there.”

“You are happy here,” Marco said, still to Nicolò. His tone had shifted; he sounded genuinely bewildered. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, brother,” said Nicolò. “As I have told you fifteen times today already.”

For some reason, that was when all the defiance leaked out of Marco. “All right; all right.”

“Safe travels, brother,” said Nicolò, and he and his men were led away.

*

“You might never see them again,” Yusuf said to Nicolò that evening. “Your family.”

“I had already made that choice,” he said. “Well, to not see them often, if at all. And my sisters are all married away from Genova anyway. And – it is not a burden like that, my heart.”

That was the first time he’d used an endearment towards Yusuf; Yusuf could not help the way he smiled at it, and did not care to help it, anyway. “What about your mother? You’ve never mentioned her.”

“She isn’t like your mother,” said Nicolò. “She chooses not to hear things that are distasteful to her. Sometimes I wonder she hears anything my father says at all.” He shrugged. “But, who knows? Maybe one day.”

“I’m glad you like it here,” said Yusuf. “It would be very uncomfortable if you did not.”

“I would have rescued myself, if I did not,” said Nicolò with complete equanimity, which was why he and Yusuf’s mother got on so well.

“Well,” said Yusuf. “We‘ll just have to find a Venetian who likes it here for Noor, too. I’m sure you can help with that.”

“Oh, your mother is still bent on that?”

“She says now we _certainly_ need a better naval alliance,” said Yusuf.

“I will help if I can,” Nicolò said, and smiled at Yusuf, and really, Yusuf thought: what better choice could he have possibly made, that night?

“I know you will, beloved,” he said, and Nicolò smiled as bright as moonlight on the waters of the bay.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone in the kink meme was like "but what about Nicolò's family?" and my brain promptly insisted on spitting out another 4k of this instead of doing, you know, work. I make NO PROMISES but there may be a third story in the works regarding Noor's prospective marriage, a trip to the other side of the Mediterranean, and the really important question: when are these idiots going to actually _fall in love_?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Best of Intentions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29157465) by [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer)




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